#Quote1I feel really sad that Europe is slipping through our fingers. It's another thing I feel really pissed off with the English about. We've been so back-seaty and passive-aggressive all the way through Europe. Now everyone's saying, "It's obviously not going to work." But if we'd taken part from the beginning we could have been so much more proactively involved in structuring the European Union. I mean, what are we going to do in 100 years if we're not European? We'll just be squeezed between China and the States. Are we always going to be the slave of the United States? I think it's gross.2[on Unconditional Love (2002)] One of the best movies I have ever done.3Hearts of Fire (1987) was the full-on, no-survivors crash of my career.4On Michelle Pfeiffer: Michelle is like a star from the '20s, distant and ethereal, like a beautiful, flickering image. In a way, she's too perfect for now. She starts work 10 hours before everyone else because she's on the bike or the Stairmaster at 3 A.M. She has such discipline. She's very serious about getting the job done.5There's a whole side of my business now which clicks its fingers for world peace and equal rights. But actually, in their own backyard, they really don't accept that any of these things is happening. So people mostly say to me, "Oh, but you've been so difficult, and you've blown everything for yourself, you've sabotaged your own career". To a certain extent it's true, but to a certain extent it isn't. There's only a certain mileage you can make, as a young pretender, as a leading man, as a homosexual. There isn't very far you can go.6[on Another Country (1984)] The best-made film of my career.7[on Another Country (1984) and Dance with a Stranger (1985)] My first two movies were classics. I should probably have died in a crash if I had been at all serious about my career.8[on working in Europe after the mid-1980s] There was very much a Brat Pack thing going on. There was really no place for me. I went to live in Europe because I thought with 1992 coming and the unification of Europe, I would be a frontiersman English actor. I thought the language was bound to become English in films, so I should go there. I did about nine films. Three are really good. One was called Cronaca di una morte annunciata (1987), based on the Gabriel García Márquez novel - it's a beautiful, beautiful film. I did a film called The Man With the Golden Spectacles (Gli occhiali d'oro (1987)), which was a huge European hit. The thing is, none of these films were exported out of Europe. England doesn't recognise Europe. America doesn't even know about Europe. So, in those terms, I disappeared.9If you're going to one of those endless meetings with ghastly executives in some hideous TV company while hungover from a night on crystal meth, you're probably not going to make the most coherent argument.10[on settling down] Thank God. I always thought I'd be found, aged 70, in a tie-dyed T-shirt haunting a toilet or at some rave in Miami. I didn't see myself ever stopping that kind of lifestyle, because I loved it so much. I can't think of anything worse than going out now..."I had so much sex all the way through my life that by not having it, I now have much more energy for other things. I would really like to do more work - proper work, not just slagging around trying to get jobs in family-viewing fairy tales in Hollywood.11I can't think of anything worse than being brought up by two gay dads... For me, personally, the last thing I would like in the entire world would be to go through cocktailing my sperm with my boyfriend and finding some grim couple in Ohio who are gluten-free and who you pay $75,000 to have your baby. [But] I'm not having a go at gay couples who do. I think if Elton and David [Elton John, David Furnish] want to have babies, that's wonderful.12People are always saying I'm self-destructive. I don't see what that means. Does it mean you see a situation, and think, 'This is an opportunity for me to really destroy myself?'... I'll always come a cropper at some point. I'm just not in kilter. Maybe the job I'm trying to do is too mainstream for me. Being an actor nowadays is about as bohemian as being a country vicar.13I've spent years getting it together, half getting it together, nearly getting it together, and it falling apart. I don't think people thought I was a good actor, probably.14A really funny chat can get me out of it. If I can have a laugh, I'm fine. Maybe I'm just too superficial to be properly depressed.15If I had to choose between being successful as a singer and successful as an actor, I know I would choose singing. (Speaking in 1987)16One of the first memories in my life is of having four records at home when I was a baby. One was My Fair Lady, the musical version of Pygmalion. But the film, I think, is one of the great overrated films. It's constipated, static. I don't like the designer, Cecil Beaton's costumes. And I don't like Audrey Hepburn. I prefer Julie Andrews, who was in the stage version. I mean, Audrey was a pretty girl, but she was a useless actress, poor thing.17[on Americans] Now they are whiny victims whose language is entirely taken from two TV shows - Friends (1994) and Sex and the City (1998) - and there's nothing sexy about them any more.18One of the great things about getting older is that unemployment becomes more and more fun.19English actors are treated like immigrants - they're a gypsy race. They go where the work is and there's never been much work in England. They're treated very badly.20I think Elton has lost it completely. He loves to tell you how he overcame addictions - drugs, bulimia... He did not overcome addictions. He went from one to another... All these shopping sprees, and not controlling his mouth.21I don't understand what he's got against her because this is the second time he's stuck into her a bit. That seems really unfair to me. Listen, any singer who dances all the time, you don't have the breath to sing all the time. Everyone knows that. It's unfair to make it a point. If you do a heavy dance routine, at some point you're going to do a bit of lip-synch. But everybody does that. Madonna sings everything she can sing but, if she goes into a dance routine, she's got to dance; you can't breathe and dance and sing at the same time. She doesn't lip-synch her whole performance. I bet Elton has lip-synched moments of his performance, even though he's at a piano all the time. He's very bossy these days, I think. I mean he's lovely but he's a bit bossy and he does seem a bit cranky.22I'm a sex machine to both genders. It's all very exhausting. I need a lot of sleep.23I have nothing to complain about... except maybe people wondering if a queen like me can butch-it-up enough to play a convincing straight man.24Why would I wear pink trousers? It's hard enough being gay.